Tuesday, April 5, 2016

'Aliens: Colonial Marines' mod may actually make the game fun

When it released in early 2013, Aliens: Colonial Marines was an absolute garbage fire of a video game. There was a lawsuit regarding the wide gulf in quality between what developer Gearbox Software (of Borderlands and upcoming Battlebornfame) and publisher Sega showed prior to release and what customers actually got, and Gearbox's CEO Randy Pitchford remains ambivalent aboutColonial Marines' quality and development process. Gearbox was eventually dropped from the suit, but it was a wholething. The modding community sounds like it might've fixed some of the most egregious sins on the PC version, though.

In addition to a bunch of much needed graphical fixes (including better shadows and textures), the release notes mention that dead bodies, body parts, acid splashes and blood splashes will remain in the game world "indefinitely." Awesome. But this is more than just a surface-level overhaul -- TemplarGFX's mod addresses the severe issues ACM's gameplay faced, too.

Specifically, reworking the artificial intelligence for the Xenomorph soldiers by increasing alien decision-making speed by 1,000 percent which "greatly increases their ability to adapt to changing situations and react to new threats." That's saying nothing of the massive changes to other Xeno enemy types to make them as terrifying as their silver screen counterparts.

Honestly? It looks like a more action-oriented version of Creative Assembly's deliberately-paced Alien:Isolation from 2014. You know, the one with the ultra-smart alien terrorizing Lieutenant Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda, on the Sevestopol space station. In case the embedded videos are enough to pique your interest, the game is currently $15 on Steam.